Card games have long provided a source of amusement and entertainment for many people. The several different varieties of poker have been considered by many to be the most exciting of all card games. In most poker games, a number of cards are dealt to several players, with the players competing against one another or the dealer to win the hand. The popularity of poker card games has led to the development of electronic game apparatus which are particularly well suited to enable a card player to play against the game apparatus or machine.
Most casinos, for example, have had electronic draw and blackjack poker apparatus for many years in a format similar to slot machines. Electronic draw poker apparatus will allow individual players to place bets, randomly "draw" cards, discard cards, and draw again to create poker hands. Such draw poker game apparatus will include hand criteria schedules or tables against which each poker hand drawn by a player can be compared. If the predetermined criteria for winning has been met, the poker apparatus will pay out money, or allow the player to make further bets. In conventional electronic draw poker game apparatus a random number generator is used to select among the playing cards, but the player sees only the selected card and cannot affect the card selection other than starting the process.
Another popular form of game apparatus that can be found in casinos is the wheel of fortune game. Most typically, such wheel of fortune games are based upon the use of a large wheel or spinner which is rotated by an employee of the casino and gradually loses its inertia until it stops at one of a plurality of spaces extending around the periphery of the wheel. The spaced are marked, often with representations of money, to indicate what players have won. The wheel of fortune is used in connection with a betting board on which one or more players can place their bets as to the space at which the wheel will stop.
In a wheel of fortune game, however, the players placing the bets cannot operate the wheel since they would learn, with time, the inertia characteristics of the wheel and might be able to influence their betting. Additionally, a wheel of fortune typically will spin for a considerable period of time to make it more difficult to anticipate the space to be selected.
Wheel of fortune gaming apparatus have, as an interesting feature, the excitement and anticipation of the rotating wheel, but they have the disadvantage of requiring an operator, and from the viewpoint of the casino, they are played relatively slowly due to the time required for the wheel to lose its inertia.
Attempts have been made to combine wheel of fortune and poker game apparatus. Once such combination is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,560,171. In this patent a poker game is played using a mechanical game apparatus, namely, game boards having spaces marked with representations of cards and associated numbers, together with a wheel of fortune or spinner device for selecting numbers. The cards and numbers are randomly associated with each other and the numbers are randomly distributed about the spinner or wheel. To play the game, each player marks the space on his or her game board which corresponds to the number generated by spinning the wheel of fortune device. After the players mark the space, the number spinner is again spun, and play proceeds until a poker hand has been drawn. In this type of apparatus, however, in addition to being cumbersome and bulky by reason of the multiplicity of game boards and separate spinner, play is again relatively slow. Moreover, if the game player can control spinning of the apparatus there will be a learning effect since the sequence on the wheel is finite and cyclical. To minimize this effect, players can be forced to change cards so as to change the number association with the cards, but this solution also is cumbersome.
Other wheel of fortune game apparatus have employed number or space selection wheels that are rotated by motors or the like and allowed to slow to make the space or number selection. Typical of these devices are U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,333,002, 3,091,388, 3,272,511 and 4,848,768. In each of these cases, however, the number sequence in cyclical or reoccurring, even if the numbers are not in any logical order. A player who controls the actuation and de-actuation or coasting of the wheel, therefore, can have some effect on the approximate number or space which is selected by the wheel. For the most part, therefore, such devices are not well suited for unsupervised gaming machines.
Finally, electronic random selection devices have been devised for wheels of fortune and for roulette-type games. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,017,081 and 3,819,186 are typical of such devices. While solving to various degrees the problem of learned anticipation, such electronic number selection devices have not been adapted for use with a poker game or, more specifically, a poker game having some of the visual excitement of a wheel of fortune game. Moreover, these electronic number selection devices essentially operate by having the user switch them on, after which the number selection is effected entirely by the electronic circuits. Thus, the fun of user input or selection is not present once the selection process is set into motion.
Accordingly, as an object of the present invention to provide an electronic game apparatus for the play of a poker game which has the visual excitement of a wheel of fortune game with the feature of user input for card selection.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a wheel of fortune poker game apparatus in which the user has input into and participates in the play of the game but cannot learn or anticipate the cards which will be selected.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an electronic game apparatus which is entertaining to play, can be played in a relatively short period of time and provides the player with a strong feeling of anticipation and excitement during play.
The electronic game apparatus of the present invention has other objects and features of advantage which will be set forth in more detail in the Best Mode of Carrying Out The Invention and will be apparent from the accompanying drawing.